Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Treacherous choices

Benedict Arnold, great traitor

The following is the second of two posts on loyalists in the American Revolution (the first, "The Price of Loyalty," is below).

Perhaps no one shows how difficult it
was to choose sides in the American Revolution, and the price to be paid for
picking the wrong one, than Benedict Arnold. For the entire history of the
United States, Arnold’s very name has been a byword for treason. But for most
of the Revolution Arnold had been regarded as a hero—in some eyes second only
to George Washington in his military accomplishments and the contribution they
had made to the Patriot cause. In fact, before he tried to give away the base
at West Point in 1780, you could make a pretty good case that Arnold had
actually achieved more than
Washington had in making material contributions to the cause of American
independence.

Like Thomas Hutchinson, George Washington, and other
Founding Fathers, Arnold had a blue-blooded colonial background. His
great-grandfather, for whom he was named, was an early governor of Rhode
Island. His grandfather and father, also named Benedict, were prominent in New
England business and politics. But Arnold’s father was also an alcoholic, and
family fortunes suffered during his childhood. Though he attended elite private
schools, Arnold never went to Yale as expected, and an apprenticeship as a
apothecary (pharmacist) with his uncles was interrupted by his decision to run
away to the state militia, to which he later returned and served briefly in the
French and Indian War. In the years that followed, Arnold built a successful
business in eastern Connecticut, much of it based, like that of Massachusetts
merchant John Hancock, on smuggling foreign goods illegally and avoiding
imperial taxes.

The coming of the Revolution was good
for Arnold. He was at the forefront of colonial resistance all through the
increasingly escalating fights over tax and economic policy in the 1760s and
’70s, and was elected captain in the Connecticut militia in 1775. He marched
his newly formed company to Massachusetts, whereupon he proposed an expedition
up the Connecticut River to seize the weakly defended Fort Ticonderoga in
upstate New York, whose artillery could be a valuable asset in the coming
struggle. Though he squabbled with Ethan Allen, leader of the famed Green
Mountain Boys—one of many disputes that marked Arnold’s military career—the
expedition was successful. The artillery at the fort was later moved to Boston,
and played an important role in the British army’s decision to withdraw from
the city in the aftermath of the Battle of Bunker Hill, a narrow British
victory that nevertheless convinced the victorious General Thomas Gage that his
besieged position in the city was no longer defensible.

In the early years of the Revolution,
even Arnold’s defeats were
impressive. When an initial plan to lead an attack on Quebec was rejected and
the campaign given to someone else, he formulated an alternative route and was
put in charge of it as a second prong of the operation. Though the effort to
take the Canadian city in late 1775 ultimately failed—a smallpox outbreak,
among other mishaps, hobbled the effort—most observers then and since credit
Arnold for his ingenuity and persistence in keeping the operation going. (He
was promoted to general for his efforts.) Arnold has also been credited as a
founding father of the United States navy. His smuggling experience came in
handy when orchestrating American operations on Lake Champlain in 1776. While
he fought to a draw at best, his maneuvers were a factor in the British
command’s fateful decision to delay further offensive operations until the
following year.

Which brings us to Arnold’s finest hour.
British grand strategy for 1777 involved a pincer movement whereby one British
army would move up the Hudson River from New York, while another moved down
from Montreal, cutting New England off from the rest of the colonies. But a
lack of coordination among British commanders resulted in the New York
contingent heading to Philadelphia instead. Meanwhile the northern British
army, its supply lines spread dangerously thin, moved down the Hudson, where it
was met by Americans converging from three sides. At the decisive moment of
what became known as the Battle of Saratoga, Arnold led an American attack on a
fiercely defended British position that turned the tide.

Saratoga is widely considered the
turning point of the American Revolution. Not only did the battle take a big
British piece off the chessboard, it also convinced a previously skeptical
French government that aiding the Americans could be a worthwhile investment in
taking their hated enemy, the British, down a peg. French financial and naval
support would ultimately be decisive in the outcome of the struggle.

So Arnold had a lot to feel good about.
And yet every step of the way he encountered resistance and indifference:
promotions that never came; subordinates who were promoted over him; a Congress
that failed to recognize his achievements. And, always, there were personal
conflicts: Arnold seemed to be perpetually arguing with his fellow officers. At
the time of Saratoga he was on such bitter terms with his commanding officer,
General Horatio Gates, that he was actually relieved of command before the
battle. Arnold’s leading the decisive attack was actually an act of
insubordination, and an furious Gates unsuccessfully sent an aide after him to
keep his rogue junior officer from reaching the front.

And while Arnold earned himself some
glory at Saratoga, it came at a price: he took a bullet in the leg at the
battle, and the horse he was riding fell on top of the same leg and broke it,
an injury from which he never fully recovered. Nor did he get all the glory he
deserved: Gates pointedly omitted mention of Arnold’s achievements in his
official account of the battle. (Though his reputation never took the hit
Arnold’s did, Gates’s career was persistently marked by a whiff of scandal; he
was apparently involved in a plot to replace General Washington early in the
war, and may have played a role in the shadowy near-mutiny that took place in
Newburgh, New York at the end of it.)

Arnold was no perfect victim. Stories of his arrogance and
shady dealings dogged him his entire life, and while it’s safe to say such
stories were more likely to be embellished and repeated in the decades after
the war, the record is clear that he was a controversial figure even when he
was considered one of the military stars of the Revolution. There were
persistent rumors that he personally profited from his management of army
resources, and was officially reprimanded by General Washington in December of
1779 over his lax approach toward handing out passes and his use of public
wagons to save private property. Aggravated by what he regarded as petty haranguing,
Arnold considered retiring from the army.

By this point he had been posted to
Philadelphia. Arnold had been widowed early in the war; it was there that he
met Margaret (“Peggy”) Shippen, who became his second wife. Shippen came from a
prominent mercantile family with strong Loyalist ties. She was also was
friendly with John Andre, a British officer she introduced to Arnold. Needless
to say, the details of what followed are at least partly shrouded in mystery.
But Andre and Arnold worked out a plan whereby Arnold, who was to be given
command of American operations at West Point in early 1780, would sabotage
operations at the base as a prelude to turning it over to British control. As
it turned out, Andre was intercepted with incriminating evidence while he was
on his way to meet Arnold, and he was eventually executed as a spy. Arnold,
tipped off to Andre’s arrest just before he was to meet with Washington,
managed to get away, aided by Peggy, who stalled a move against her husband by
professing ignorance, shock and outrage when Washington interrogated her at
West Point. Washington let her go, and she ultimately joined her husband in
London. The couple raised five children and spent much of their subsequent life
in Canada.

Why did Arnold betray the American
cause? Did he do it for love? Money? A character defect? Probably all three
were involved, among other reasons. Actually, Arnold himself offered a bunch
himself: “Neglected by Congress below, distressed with the small-pox; want of
Generals and discipline in our Army, which may be rather called a great rabble,
our credit and reputation lost, and great part of the country; and a powerful
foreign enemy advancing upon us, are so many difficulties we cannot surmount
them,” he explained of his decision.

Go ahead and call that rationalizing on
Arnold’s part. It surely was. But while you can credibly call him slimy or
cowardly, one thing you can’t really say about him is that he was stupid.
Actually, George Washington could have said exactly the same things Arnold did
in 1780, when a major British offensive in the southern colonies showed every
sign of succeeding, at least at first. In fact, Washington did say many of the same things in his steady stream of letters
cajoling, complaining and lamenting the lack of support the American effort was
getting. Like the men who had signed the Declaration of Independence,
Washington had pledged his life and honor on the American cause. Noble or not,
these people knew they were as good as dead if that cause failed. Arnold knew
it too, but he made a different calculation, one that had a certain
plausibility to it whether or not he happened to be a nice man, or whether or
not you happened to agree with him. Washington made his bet on the outcome of
the Revolution and won, thanks to the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, where, as at
Saratoga, the Americans bagged an entire British army, convincing the
government in London that the war simply wasn’t worth it anymore.

Arnold, by contrast, made his bet and
lost. Actually, the outcome Revolution wasn’t a total disaster for him. Unlike Andre, Arnold escaped with his life,
and while he never got the big payday he was hoping for in turning over West
Point—since he didn’t actually do it, he didn’t get the money—the British
government did compensate him for at least some of his pains. He assumed a
command in the British army, and fought in Virginia late in the war, capturing
Richmond in December of 1780. After the war, he was received by King George the
III and resumed his business. He was embroiled in any number of personal
disputes, but that had always been the case with him. Still, Arnold who died in
1801, spent the last twenty years of his life with his name as a byword for
treachery, and he wasn’t much more liked in Britain than he was in the United
States. He clearly regretted his choice, and once said it would have been
better had he been shot in the chest rather than the leg at Saratoga. In that
scenario, he would have died a hero.

Let’s be clear: the goal here is not to
rehabilitate Benedict Arnold. George Washington was more than a lucky
gambler—among other things, he was a man who was notably good at working with
and mentoring people, like Alexander Hamilton, an arrogant genius who served as
Washington personal aide and who Washington as president would shrewdly
delegate the job of inventing a modern capitalist economy. (Another man who
worked under Washington was Aaron Burr, who would later kill Hamilton.)
Washington was exceptionally careful in managing his personal affairs as well
as in running an army for which he refused to accept a salary. Of course, he
could afford to. Could, and did.

But being a good or nice man is beside
the point. Which is this: that major social upheavals like revolutions are not
simply difficult experiences because of the death and destruction they rain
down on those on those who choose to participate in them.Or that they rain down death and
destruction on those who do not
choose to participate in them, but nevertheless get caught in the crossfire.
It’s also that they create situations where people perceive that they might
actually have a choice in the matter,
and that their choice may have consequences far beyond their ability to
calculate. As Americans we cherish our freedom. But this is a kind of freedom
most of us would cheerfully forgo.

As a military event, at least, the
American Revolution ended 230 years ago. If you’re like most Americans, you
regard yourself as a happy beneficiary of that outcome, which you commemorate
with a barbeque, fireworks display, or some other form of celebration every
July 4. If pressed, you’d probably concede that the Patriot cause was not
entirely noble, and that as with most disputes, there are at least two sides to
every story. You might even feel like American victory wasn’t all that
deserving, like a team that wins a game on a disputed call or technicality. But
you’re still glad your side won.

You should be even more glad that you
didn’t have to pick the winning side. Maybe it’s that more than anything that
makes being an American so precious: the freedom to not choose. Americans weren’t always that fortunate (life wasn’t
much fun in this regard when the Civil War broke out in 1861, or at the height
of the Vietnam War). And they won’t be forever. But overall, our history has
been one of stability. It may well be that the very definition of a successful
society is one that spares its citizens the most painful polarities of
politics.

About King's Survey

King's Survey is an imaginary high school history class taught by Abraham King, a.k.a. "Mr. K." Though the posts proceed in a loosely chronological fashion, you can drop in on the conversation any time. For more background on this series, see my other site, Conversing History. The opening chapter of "Kings Survey" is directly below.

“The Greatest Catholic Poet of Our Time . . . Is a Guy from the JerseyShore? Yup,” in The Best Catholic Writing 2007, edited by Jim Manney (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2007)

“I’s a Man Now: Gender and African-American Men,” in Divided Houses:Gender and the Civil War, edited by Nina Silber and Catherine Clinton (Oxford University Press, 1992).

THE COMPLETE MARIA CHRONICLES, 2009-2010

Most writing in the vast discourse about American education is analytic and/or prescriptive: It tells. Little of that writing is actually done by active classroom teachers. The Maria Chronicles, like the Felix Chronicles that preceded them (see directly below), takes a different approach: They show. These (very) short stories of moments in the life of the fictional Maria Bradstreet, who teaches U.S. history at Hudson High School, located somewhere in metropolitan New York, dramatize the issues, ironies, and realities of a life in schools. I hope you find them entertaining. And, just maybe, useful, whether you’re a teacher or not.–Jim Cullen